AdDuplex requires ID_CAP_PHONEDIALER

We’ve recently started using AdDuplex in our trial apps to get some extra promotion, as using the Microsoft PubCenter. 

We previously had the Microsoft Ad Control in the app, and it required a lot of capabilities that frankly I think scares off users.

So, I was very happy to learn that AdDuplex required only ID_CAP_NETWORKING

One of the apps we updated was a WP7 app, and as part of the submission Capabilities are automatically detected (this is no longer the case on WP8), and I was surprised that it flagged up ID_CAP_PHONEDIALER.  I suspected that I had done something wrong with remove of the old ad control.  ID_CAP_PHONEDIALER is added when you use the PhoneCallTask API

So I fired up JustDecomple from Telerik and did a search for that in my xap project.

Eventually, that led me to the AdDuplex.Models.NetworkManager class and it’s DisplayPhone method, which is called by AdDuplex.HandleAdClick

It turns out that if a phone number is supplied by the ad, that is the preferred mechanism for serving the ad!  I contacted AdDuplex about this, and I was told that the server currently will not serve these ads.

What DOES this mean for users of the control?

In the case that it does in the future, you will be pleased to know that your app will crash if you haven’t added the capability to your app if the user clicks on one of these links.  This also means that a man in the middle attack on AdDuplex’s servers could also cause your app to crash.

I contacted AdDuplex to ask about this and was told:

“We will consider removing the capability from the SDK. It’s only there for some future feature which is unlikely to materialize any time soon and we don’t actually want to serve ads like that. Thank you for bringing this to our attention.”

In the meantime, it’s still there in the latest November 14th update, 2.8.0.4